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Grading Behavior vs. Grading Behaviors
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103 thoughts on “Grading Behavior vs. Grading Behaviors”
The most clearly expressed sentence I have yet heard on this topic, by the way, is from Annemarie Orth in Maine. She makes it so simple. It is an important sentence to have at the ready when discussing this topic with colleagues who may not be thinking along the new lines:
…we tie learning targets and assessments to habits of learning….
Hey, everyone!
I hope your summer is going well and I’m glad to read that the iFLT was informative. The week before, I got the chance to meet Scott Benedict at a 3-day conference in Philly. The last day, we spoke about assessments and grading. I have some issues with what I learned-those being that I love the grading setup but I’m basically required to grade a certain way. Scott kept saying, “Be an advocate for change,” and while I will most certainly try, I can promise that this change is going to take some time and I want to be prepared with my grade setup before September.
I would appreciate any help anyone can give me on how to push a square peg into a round hole.
Here’s what I’m dealing with:
At my school we must have 3 categories with these percentages
1) Homework [Level 1: 10%, Level 2: 10%]
2) Participation [Level 1: 25%, Level 2: 20%]
3) Assessments [Level 1: 65%, Level 2: 70%]
I’m all for this grading idea:
Culture 5%
Listening and Reading 15%
Writing and Speaking 30%
Participation isn’t an academic grade, it’s a citizenship grade
WONDERFUL!
Now…when it comes to math my brain drips out of my ears. I’ve presented to you the way my department must represent grades and also what I would like to do if I could get around it. Any ideas?
I’m all for this grading idea:
Culture 5%
Listening and Reading 15%
Writing and Speaking 30%
What do you do for the other 50% ? Just wondering.
Listening and reading are EACH 15% and writing and speaking are EACH 30%
Think about giving the “receptive” skills the great emphasis…Listening and Reading each 30% and the “productive” skills …Writing and Speaking…each 15%. Could you do that?
with love,
Laurie
Hi Laurie,
The reason Scott gave for give the higher percentages to “productive skills” writing and Speaking is because they are “higher order”
and deserve more…
I tend to agree with you though…. especially if our primary goal is to get kids to succeed…
I hate to disagree with the grading expert, but especially in the first two-three years, our instruction is heavily weighted towards input…I think that our assessment should reflect that. If we are not spending 30% of our time on Writing, why are we using 30% of the grade to reflect achievement in that area?
Luckily, in my department we (so far) have the ability to decide for ourselves how the grades are distributed. That sure could change…I still have four years left. :o)
Thanks for the explanation Skip!!!
with love,
Laurie
who is still on Colorado/Vegas time….
In my opinion higher order manipulation of language can’t even begin until we have had thousands of hours of input in the form of reading and listening. How many thousands of hours, I don’t know, but thousands. If Scott is suggesting that we take less than that, say one hundred hours, and try to move into output from there, then I strenuously disagree on an intuitive level and from my own experience, since I am not aware of any research to base my statement on. Krashen came up to me at Los Alomitos and said, “Hey Ben what don’t they get about the word unconscious?” It is so right on. Language learning is an unconscious process. We hear the language for thousands of hours and then when the wiring is nearing completion after all those hours, output starts to happen NATURALLY and I do not categorize critical thinking as natural in terms of language acquisition. Do we build subway lines from downtown out to the suburbs and force the train down the track out to the outlying towns before the track is complete? That is what forcing higher order conscious manipulation of language does. It sends the train down the track before the connecting stations and the track are ready to handle the train. Seems kind of stupid to me. Why can’t we understand and accept that in four years of a high school program we only can get in 500 hours of input and that is if we stay in the TL the whole time? When are we going to quit using forced output to teach our languages? Do we go into our gardens and pry flowers open because we can’t wait to see and experience their beauty, which is what critical thinking in language acquisition does to kids? Watch the kids wilt. Are we going to go for 70% input this year with our first year classes and then do critical thinking about the language in terms of output the rest of the time? Or 50%/50%?? Seems dumb. I challenge experienced teachers in this group this year to go for 98%+ input in all their classes this year and those new to all of this can maybe aim for 80% or above. Or we could keep doing what we know doesn’t work.
Thanks Ben for reminding us of our earthly human limitations.
“500 total hours if we stay in the TL 100% of the time”! Wow, how incredibly little compared with the massive input we got in our mother tongue before we even started uttering. OK I know I am comparing apples to oranges (babies on a blank slate and teenagers in the case of high school teaching) . I think once we accept the fact that that’s all we have to work with, then we can adjust our expectations and be happy with what we get out of our kids.
We are talking paradigm shift and getting most of our kids if not all successful and perhaps wanting to continue with the language or go immerse themselves in the language to attain fluency later on.
And the part that counts in this shift is that babies are much more open than high school kids. Look what schools do to kids in their first fifteen years of life. They all but shut them down. There are some who thrive, but thrive at what? Being the best in the invisible competition to be the best memorizer? It starts in 5th grade and cascades from there. There is so little that is true in schools. The kids get that and shut down and then we have the gall to force them to speak and write? Why do we do that? Why do we forcefully pry open flowers? We have to vote, Krashen is right or Krashen is wrong. If Krashen is right, then we can’t force output. If he is wrong, then we can continue to do what we have always done. We can’t say we adhere to Krashen’s ideas and then turn around and design output activities in our so-called comprehension based classrooms. Maybe a little in levels three and four, but again, the activities much be natural, emerge naturally. They must not be assigned. Certainly not before the flowers have been properly watered in levels one and two. Why do the flowers wilt (drop out) by level three at the rate of over 76%? Because they have other things to study? Because they are too busy? No. They wilt (drop out) because they have been shamed and they don’t like learning from us. They don’t like to have the deep magical land of language learning that must be left alone for it to work messed with. They don’t want that divinely organized system forced open. What don’t we get about forced output being shaming, unnatural and unproductive?
We can vote Krashen’s ideas wrong but it would be an erroneous vote. The man is right. We only have to look with our eyes. Why do we as humans continue to ignore whatever is directly in front of us? Why do we continue to push that which is impossible.
Sabrina’s ideas of students moving into their own desire to learn more fluidity is exactly what needs to happen from our classes. Nothing else makes sense. The hundreds of hours we give them is only a teaser. Not the whole banana.
and Sabrina I would like to opt in for staying 80% or above. I will tape class and let you know how I am doing.
Awsome Kate,
You are the best! I m so happy to have met you and I learned so much from your session. You get it!
How can you teach kids if their basic needs are not met (think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs)? Although as teachers we may not be able to heal every kid from whatever trauma they carry along, we must acknowledge that need and show the kids we care, give them that space. That’ s what your presentation reminded me of. It touched me on a very deep level. Thank you!
“I challenge experienced teachers in this group this year to go for 98%+ input in all their classes this year and those new to all of this can maybe aim for 80% or above”
I want in on that challenge. It makes me think of people who challenge themselves to lose weight ( is there some kind of show about that?, I don’t have cable).
May be I can keep a log, or better yet, have the kids police me.
And anyone who wants to join me, we can keep logs and push each other in the direction of 98% CI daily!
OK – I accept the challenge!! BUT…..seriously, HOW do we measure? I understand “job for kid” but how does the kid measure? Time in English? Time in L2? does breaking out of L2 for quick explanation count?
Quick explanations ( 5 to 1o seconds) shouldn’t count , I think.
There are lots of styles on this from having kids police you to your policing yourself. I prefer the latter. It’s really hard. We have grown accustomed to explanations in L1, and so we continue in that wasteful manner. We like the sound of our voices. We just have to stop it. I think quick explanations should count bc they always go longer than we intend. It’s a hydra-headed problem. Proof lies in video of ourselves teaching. We would be shocked.
Dear Jennifer,
I don’t know if this will help, but it’s how I set up last year (I still need to revisit it myself for this year! Isn’t it crazy how we’re never happy with a system – this is only my 5th year of teaching, and I find I keep ‘switching’ things!)
Listening
Reading
Speaking
Writing …………………….all at 20%
Culture………………………………10%
HOW (Habits of Work – thanks Skip and Therese!)……..10%
I would love to hear other suggestions as well —
In Denver Public Schools we weigh output at 80% on our summative exams given to all DPS kids at the end of each year. About 40% each for listening and reading and 10% or less each for writing and speaking. That is because the research supports such a distribution. If 10,000 hours is needed for mastery and we have the kids in there for a mere 600 hours over a four year program (if we are able to stay in the TL all of the time), and Krashen is right that we need massive amounts of input before output can even occur, bc that is how the language acquisition process is designed – to be natural and slow and with wiring so sophisticated that we can have no idea of the damage done by trying to speed it up – then we should limit our assessment of writing and speaking to a very small fraction of our assessment. A very very small fraction. That is my view on percentages in grading. I like simple grading and I like formative grading that encourages and does not shame kids. So an easy yes/no comprehension quick quiz at the end of class is about all I really do for grading. Keeps things simple. Why do teachers accept complexity in grading when it helps neither them nor the kids and gives false indicators all over the place, esp. the bogus “project” grades? Are we still trying to impress people with our gradebooks? Lord have mercy on that need to have snappy looking gradebooks. We don’t need them. They do not help us. Projects are crap. If a child doesn’t want to do it and it hangs over their head like all the other crap projects that they have to do in their other crappy drudge-filled classes, then we make our classes like their other classes, and that is a bad thing. Bring them success with easy short formative assessments. Tell them how wonderful they are in class and that THAT, even more than the quizzes, is how you will determine their grade. We can’t use the old percentage distribution grading model anymore because hidden in it are pellets of shame, pellets of shame. Grade them on output when they are ready and not before they are ready. Give them that time. Please give them that time to be innocent and let them output when each is ready. It is like flowers. They all bloom at different times. We must not force.
We probably need to put grading front and center in our discussions this year. There are hundreds of posts and comments on the topic but we are not focused. We are not aligning with each other. We are applying old models. Just sayin’.
I’m not about to start that discussion formally here as I just got back from a disappointing conference in Las Vegas, but we need to keep in mind that we need to align our grading with our focus on the Three Modes and on formative and not summative assessment.
I think that a good place to start is by searching “grading” here on the site and start thinking about grading with those articles. There is also the assessment category.
We have a lot of work to do this year and we need to get our “starting the year” discussion about posters and all that going as well. Some of us start real soon! So you can also click on the “beginning the year” categery and start reading there as well, unless you have a few more weeks and time to just fully relax before cranking it all up again.
oh no, why disappointing?
I was also wondering if we might be able, as a group, to pin down 2-3 or 4? goals for the 12-13 school year? I know we had mentioned upper levels…
What do you think?
Hi skip I don’t mean disappointed in the people, certainly. Just in the sameness of it each year. Upper level training at NTPRS is never vibrant. I don’t like the cult of personality there. There were questions in some of the coaching. Other sessions had little value. I don’t like the format. Break out sessions – where the real work is done – were practically non-existent except for ours Wednesday night and then chill and Doug Stone and I coached Liam one night (the new Jason Fritze – wow what a talent!). Lots of reasons. Honestly I didn’t feel all that great about iFLT either. Yes we taught real kids there but they were 4%ers so we can’t say that we created a real classroom setting. I can’t blame people for going to shows in Las Vegas and stuff but I was there to work and not lose a precious minute. You were awesome in your growth from my last trip to Maine, by the way. You had it on cruise control. Light years in growth esp. in terms of pacing and style. I don’t know. I don’t want to bad mouth either conference, but I think there are better ways to pack more dollar value into smaller amounts of time away from home. People travel so far and then end up in sessions that may or may not help them and they end up sitting in hallways waiting for something to happen and all those people going in different directions. It’s like the moretprs list in that way. I think that the power in training is in the smaller, more bonded groups like our group here. That is what I mean when I say disappointed. Seeing my brothers and sisters in this fight is always wonderful – don’t get me wrong. But something was not right this year. Bryce felt it too.
Topics in my mind so far:
1. Rest as much as possible for the next few weeks.
2. Discussions on starting the year with particular attention to posters.
3. Continuing Harrell’s initiative in aligning with ACTFL and the Three Modes and that for real.
4. Upper levels.
5. I forgot the other one.
I felt SO bad for Bryce. He was feeling SO burnt out… I thought I might check in with him in a few days to see how he is feeling….
Yeah, I had mixed feelings about this year’s conference in Vegas too.
I think the most valuable part for me was the Coaching workshop on Sunday, where 30 of us practiced coaching each other, under the guidance of seasoned NTPRS coaches. We focused on different skills, but from the perspective of helping others master them. Of course, as teaching always does, it helped us solidify our own skills as well.
The main conference felt less focused to me. Last year, I loved the new format and enjoyed getting to know a smaller group as we moved through the week together in the 8 skills sessions. But when I saw this year’s schedule had the same 8 skills sessions, I wondered how it could possibly be worthwhile. Of course I always learn something new, even when the topic is familiar, but I am at the point where I don’t need to keep adding to my toolbox, I need to get to work on a specific job. Even in my mostly-FLES group this year, there was such variation in skill levels and experience, that I didn’t feel we had a common purpose.
What I really wanted to do, both in Vegas and in Breckenridge, was sit down with other elementary teachers and talk nuts and bolts about how to build a story-based comprehensible input curriculum for a twice-a-week, 50-hour-a-year elementary school language class. How do we fit the reps and circling and story-building into two 30/40-minute classes a week? Where do reading and writing belong– can we do FVR and free writes? Reading is so key to everything else at this level, I feel like I have to find a place for it in language learning. Many of us did manage to have lunch together twice in Breck, but it was barely enough time to scratch the surface. One of the most valuable things I learned at Breckenridge is that a 1st-grade FLES class meeting twice a week can reasonably cover (only) about 25 structures A YEAR. Who knew?!
Today, on the moretprs list, Greg K shared his suggestion for a better conference format: “seasoned users need time and guidance to put their heads together and design a unit, or even a maxi-lesson that could serve as a template. Collaboration on the creation, practice and revision of materials would be of great benefit. We can go from structures to stories to reading and writing to assessments (vocab, translation, reading, listening and writing). A series of make and take sessions would be so very engaging, indeed, for people who circle in their sleep.”
I think I need more than ‘a series’ of discrete sessions. I want an extended planning retreat with folks who have a similar level of experience and face some of the same challenges I do. Do you think there’s room for such a track at the national conference, or is it another type of gathering altogether?
Seeking…
-a-
…I don’t need to keep adding to my toolbox, I need to get to work on a specific job….
Right on Anny. We could talk about this for hours. What are the specific jobs? In my opinion it is getting to our pacing and style and incorporating those into the mechanical aspects of the method. That is what we addressed Wed. nite and why people agreed with me whenever the topic came up that the best model IS that Wed. nite model where an experienced teacher models something like Circling with Balls and then gives the marker to the person willing to get up and at that point, with the modeling fresh in their minds, the coaching occurs. That is my new model for conferences, but I have decided not to return to iFLT or NTPRS in future because of many of the things that Anny describes and what many people are saying. I love that this PLC is private – here is another example of where the privacy works in our favor. God bless Blaine and iFLT but I just feel honestly that money and valuable time are being wasted at these conferences and they need to change to be much more focused, much more impactful, much more lighthearted and in particular much less about the cult of personality and the cult of the super presenter. Hell, we are not presenters, we are teachers. Let’s just work together as we do all year in this group when we get together at conferences and stop sitting on our butts in three hour sessions wondering if we have gone to the wrong session.
Hi Anny!! I’ve always thought that discomfort is a pre-cursor to growth and these responses to the conferences may be just that…a way for REALLY experiences CI teachers to start thinking about what is needed and what can be done. Let’s face it: We are (as a profession using CI) in a different place than we were 10 years ago. We still have a great need for beginner training. We still have a great need for intermediate training. But now we have a cadre of folks who are beyond that. In the past, there have been just about enough of those folks that they were tapped to provide training and sessions for others. But now, several things have happened: a. There are more experienced people than there is money to pay them to present. b. They want to continue growing. c. They are feeling the need for a community at their level
The greatest challenge for organizers is this…and I don’t mean this to be insulting to anyone in any way…most of us OVERestimate where we are. (I am not speaking to Anny or anyone else in this group!) Just know that in the past two years, I have presented to the “advanced” group (self-identified) and for several years have coached the beginning, intermediate (the year we tried that) and advanced groups. In TPRS/CI advanced really means : have used extensively with students for more than 5 years and continually tries to adapt and improve.
At other conferences, it is a “shopping” mall mentality: Go to a presentation and pick up what you want…go home with a bag full of new ideas. These conferences are not and should not be like this. Participants need to go into each presentation/coaching/workshop with this question in mind: How can this change me as a teacher? How can I incorporate that change EVERY DAY in my teaching.
That is an entirely different approach then : What good idea can I get here?
What I am sensing is also needed is an Organizational need. Now that I have changed, how do I get my curriculum/lesson planning/assessment to align with my instruction and approach to dealing with students?
This is a wonderful thing. Now, how do we get the folks who have changed in a “track” like that, without creating a “shopping mall” of “good idea stores” for folks who are there to fill their conference bags when they really need to continue to wrap their mind around the paradigm?
I’m quite serious. We encountered a large number of people who had obviously little idea about what CI was about (both years), but in their minds, they had been to a one or two day workshop, “purchased” what they needed and were on the to new “idea mall”. They needed to be in the skills sessions.
The beauty of this is that we are growing so much that we need to address these changes…what a blessing!!
and Anny, I love the idea of an extended planning retreat…the retreat idea is one that Ben and Skip and I have been drawn to before…
with love,
and gratitude to have had the chance to see and “meet” so many of you in the past two weeks,
Laurie
Well, what is missing here is what the organizers of those conferences want to accomplish.
Anny I wish you had something to me. I would have been happy at either conference to have done a breakout with you on planning. I have my kids once a week.
I liked both conferences, but I am new to the field. I got things out of re-cycled sessions. I felt that the trainers were often overworked–Bryce, Carol, etc.
I think the coaching session on Sun. was fabulous! I think that kind of coaching through the skills for those oldsters would be great as a one day session–much like the beginners had a full day session. I got a lot out of Blaine’s new technique of taking present to the informant and past to the class for storyasking and building.
At breckenridge, it was important to see the 4%. Those kids were excited about learning. And that is good. I saw plenty of kids in the drifty state of classroom stuff that caused teachers to go into their behavior skills. But, I watched some elem. groups. Bryce did a debrief with his class on the last day (high school) that was that whole meta-cognition thing going down.
All that said–two conferences in two weeks? Not likely that I can do that again physically. Just sayin’.
I would like to state there were things I wanted and disappointments I had. But, overall both conferences were worth the time spent and different skills were added to my bucket list which is slopping over by the way.
Hi Ben,
I’ve watched all of your YouTube videos (thank you for sharing, awesome!), I’ve been to 3 workshops on TPRS over the past 2 years, and I still don’t know WHERE to start Lesson 1, Day 1. Number one was at OFLA, #2 KWLA. I remember very little, except that Swedish seems to have a lot of English cognates.
At #3, Donna Tatum-Johns did a GREAT job of teaching us how to practice TPRS in a recent workshop. Bryce Hedstrom provided a pdf on his website in a format that was easy for me to understand the basics of TPRS.
I joined this site because I believe in this method of teaching, but I still feel unprepared to use TPRS. It’s like everyone else knows what they’re talking about, but it’s all for people who already know the big picture. Yikes, I feel like my students learning grammar & vocabulary, but not knowing how to write a letter to a pen pal, or not understanding the spoken phrase, “Would you like something to drink?” (Which is why I’m here! I don’t want to do this to kids!)
Please, where do I go to find out (1.) what to do on day 1 lesson 1, (2.) what do you do after reading the story: writing, assessment (I teach high school students; grades are required, and I want them to be meaningful). (3) Do I use TPRS with my existing curriculum (C’est à toi !) ? (4) How do you keep track of all of the personalized stories/details if you teach several different classes a day? (5) When & what to begin VFR (voluntary free reading)?
Thank you for any help or direction to the whole picture.
Writing a letter to a pen pal requires huge skills. Skills that can’t just be taught in a short amount of time. Massive amounts of input are required. That is a BIG SKILL – writing letters and is only acquired after, honestly, THOUSANDS of hours. Unless you want the grammar to reflect conscious prescribed grammar, the two dimensional fake kind that does not have its roots in SOUND. Then they can write a letter but it is pretty much garbage. We write based on sound, not analysis of rules.
In the same way, it would take me many many classes to bring my students to instant ability to understand my question about their wanting something to drink. That is big time processing! Think of it. Really, think of the complexity of that sound. Nothing happens fast!
How do we get to our students being able to write a letter and understand complex and lengthy chunks of sound? We repeat input in the form of listening and reading first, for years, to tell what I think is the truth based on my own experience and interpretation of the research and thinking about it 24/7 for the past 36 years.
Addressing those five questions:
(1.) what to do on day 1 lesson 1 –
I gave a session on this at iFLT and one at NTPRS. It is not meant to be THE answer (none of what we write here is meant to provide a standardized response to anything – we all do what we do, we take what we want from these pages as individual teaching artists so that we can have the great good fortune of melding our teaching with our personality how cool is that. So here is a link to those sessions:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/07/15/iflt-lesson-plans-revised-7812/
Also go to the resource page here and find those four activities that I start the year with described in detail. They are also in the iFLT and NTPRS handouts. Let me know if you can’t find stuff. (I can’t either but it sounds like a nice thing to say.)
Skip starts with Circling with Props and it is powerful. I could see how his teaching has skied in the past few years and alot of what he does is based on that starting the year stuff that he actually carries deep into the year before starting stories.
(2.) what do you do after reading the story: writing, assessment (I teach high school students; grades are required, and I want them to be meaningful).
See the comment below on this.Trust me, your grades won’t be meaningful if they are based on forced about before the kids are ready. You might as well slam a book in their faces if you make them take some kind of writing assessment after reading to them in the SACRED WAY described in the reading article I published a link to here tonite. Just because grades are required doesn’t mean they have to be output grades. I fake my bosses out. Do we really think they go in and reflect on the pedagogical nature of what our assessments look like and if they are connected to the research? They don’t because they don’t understand the research. Don’t make your life any more complicated than it needs to be in your gradebook. What we are doing is emancipating ourselves from bullshit. You are new to this and I apologize for the preachy tone, but we need to make sure all your questions are thoroughly answered in terms of current research. I need for others to jump in here, by the way, because shari is not alone in this transition. Shari I have one thing to say here. If you get a response from Jody on any of these questions, memorize it. I tend to motormouth, but she is more of a scholar on this because she gets Krashen more than Krashen. That is because she is a classroom teacher of the greatest talent and Krashen is not. He even told me in Breckenridge, every time I asked a question, and I had a whole year’s worth from this group, he said, “Hey, I just did the research – you guys have to figure out how it works in your classrooms.”
OK that is my answer to question #2 and hopefully there will be others from the super talented teachers in this PLC. Have you ever been to war with the wrong people? That won’t happen here. Trust me on that. The soldiers on either side of me are shooting straight.
(3) Do I use TPRS with my existing curriculum (C’est à toi !) ?….
Absolutely not. We don’t mix CI instruction with textbooks. Period. At least, in the world of what is best for kids. If we have to do it bc there are jerks with small grasp of CI telling us to do it or lose our jobs, I would do it until I had full mastery of CI and then you couldn’t be fired bc your kids would bring so many other kids that your enrollments would be the deciding factor.
(4) How do you keep track of all of the personalized stories/details if you teach several different classes a day?
You create templates based on your story script. Each class has a story writer and the stories are all based on the same script so they don’t differ all that much and you write a story for all five classes that roughly repeats what each class produced. They love to look for identifiers of friends in other classes. OR you write five stories, which takes a little over an hour but is only done once a week. I do both, depending on my workload for that week.
(5) When & what to begin VFR (voluntary free reading)?
Diana wants us to do it from the beginning of the year level one. However, my guru, Jody, says and I agree that level one FVR has its limits which I won’t address here. We can talk about this one. I feel I will do some FVR starting in August to set the class routine, since I have the books, but note that this year I am staying with my last year’s level ones and so have no level ones this year. But yeah, think if you have level ones if you really want to do FVR before the spring. I say not. They are too immature and not ready, is the short answer.
Ironically my vids are nothing like what really happens when no one but the kids are there. Such is life. I put them up there as ways to convey ideas only. What we do can’t actually be trapped onto a film. Maybe with a professional crew and $20K but only then.
Shari,
You mentioned OFLA. Do you live in Ohio?
Of course, as always, you are absolutely right….. I really hope you convey that message on the conference survey…
I think they are looking to shake things up next year… so your input could be very important…
I think the model of “expert conveying knowledge” is limited. It was not until I asked Susie to take on a “coaching” model… (She presented the idea of contrastive grammar, and then I used it and she coached me (and the “class”) through it that it was got REALLY powerful. Honestly the first three sessions where we were “experts” modelling it, got VERY luke warm evaluations. But on the last 5, where Susie coached me through it, almost everyone mentioned how powerful it was to watch a teacher being coached through it.
I know I am sounding like a very broken record here, but I am absolutely convinced that COACHING will be THE THING that brings us to the next level. It is just too easy to think we “get this” until we get up in front of others who really can TPRS. It happened to me 3 years ago and it was THE pivotal moment in my TPRS journey. The coaching sessions at NTPRS (including yours) were really the most useful, I think.
Don’t forget the comments from my colleagues that “what Anne Matava did at the conference was awesome, but she wasn’t doing TPRS…”
I will end by saying that I discovered in Susie’s sessions that very few people even know how to circle (no judgement because that is what you discovered about me too, remember, and it blew you away? All I am saying is that we have GOT to stop having TPRS presented by experts and start coaching people and taking their hand step by step or TPRS will never be correctly represented to our kids.
Thanks Ben. I am so indebted to you and am one that REALLY does appreciate what you do during your sessions… Thanks for giving the chance to be coached Wednesday night…
Skip
Skip,
You are so right. I was in that very first session on monday in the wedding chapel where you and Susie cotaught and it wasn’t helpful . I didn’t get it, still to day I do not know what contrastive grammar is and what the whole purpose of that presentation was. But seeing you being coached by Ben was amazing. You were amazing and I learned so much more that way. This model was so powerful and the one I learned most from.
OK Skip — when can I come again???? I know that I desperately need coaching! Or, do you want to come down my way??
Actually, perhaps we can figure out a way to have a “coaching workshop” up here at a school – at one that is VERY open to TPRS – ALL teachers and admin. That way we can teach REAL kids (not just 4%ers) in their natural surroundings, so they will be more likely to be “natural”
Never met with my principal yet, BTW – will do so after the 13th (when he returns from vacation) I *NEED* to get my thoughts together!
I am totally committed to help out in any way you think would help. I think we need to focus on people and strategies that will bring the most success for the amount of effort given.
I think a coaching session before school starts would be very useful and make it easier for folks to attend. Once school starts it will be more difficult I think.
I know I could get some kids together for a morning. I do think that would be most helpful…. If you could as well the advantage would be that your administrators might be able to witness it too? (My administrators are on board so no convincing is needed there)
Would you have a way to see if there were any other interest? I know Claudette Moran and a colleague visited my room last year.. They are in Berwick)
Perhaps we could brainstorm and nail down some details/strategies to make that session most useful?
Let me know what you think
skip
Dear Skip,
I am TRYING (hoping, praying) to get my superintendent to let me spend the Tues and Wed before the Maine conference going into willing teachers’ classrooms to observe and coach. I don’t know if he’s going to go for it. (hmmm…maybe a letter of request?!!!)
Please know that I am not asking this because I think I am an expert. I am asking for this because every time that I do it, it helps me to be a better teacher, and a better person!!!!! I think that we all need to start doing this with each other until it becomes totally natural to have a second teacher in the classroom helping us and our students.
with love,
Laurie
…perhaps we can figure out a way to have a “coaching workshop” up here at a school – at one that is VERY open to TPRS – ALL teachers and admin….
This may be brilliant. Open it up. Don’t use the term TPRS bc that is a bad word in some buildings. But do the coaching for anyone wanting to come.
Skip,
I agree about coaching being a key element of our TPRS practice. That was one big difference between this year’s skill sessions and last year’s– I only saw participants being truly coached in one of the 7 sessions I was in last week. While I admit that I often want to melt into the floor when a presenter says: “Now get together with 3 other people and practice skill X,” I do come away feeling much more confident after I’ve tried and watched others try a new or even not-so-new skill.
-a-
Watching Ben work with Jacob, Mosiah and Katie at NTPRS St. Louis cemented in me the knowledge this can happen. Working with the experienced coaches on Sun. at NTPRS 2012 cemented in me that I was trying to hard to do the phrases the coaches had picked out. Katya gave me permission in her workshop to see my language as the difference it is from Romance Languages but not to apologize for it. To go for it.
I did. I had two very successful circling, coaching experiences in the same day. And one was going after Michele W. with a group of very experienced TPRS trainer folks.
This is all about improving our skills where we are at. Coaching is the key element to that.
…COACHING will be THE THING that brings us to the next level….
I disagree in the sense that the coaching at NTPRS was not as it should have been. I heard too many stories of put downs. Coaching needs to be elevated and defined and illustrated before we just just the term. I agree with your general point skip but not as it was done in Las Vegas. We are dealing with very fragile egos here, which is totally natural given the nature of the beast we are trying to tame. It has to be done in a certain way. THERE IS NO FORMULA that can be transmitted! Where will this discussion go? Who knows? But it certainly is nice to say here this evening in this spate of sharing of ideas that the TPRS Cult of Personality and Great Masters being right all the time is finally over.
Why do you say finally over? I am not so sure but one can only hope…. My ego was totally trashed this week. After the third session with Susie one evaluator said “I don’t think Skip knows how to do it (contrastive grammar).
Also, just to clarify, when I a refer to coaching I was referring to Susie’s session where she coached me…. That is what people said was helpful – watching Susie coach me….
I actually think that coaching is MOST helpful to those watching anyways. I learn more from watching someone else get coached than actually being coached my self.
That was when I had to make a decision. I was either going to quit or change the format. That is when I went to susie and asked if we could change the format to her coaching me through it. That is when people started writing how helpful it was.
I have not been through the “Coaches Training” but I wonder what you would say, Ben, is key to coaching. What are key elements that should go into coaching sessions?
The key to coaching is love.
How do you see coaching being done Ben? How many people per group? Teachers as students only or observers included who are not acting as students? How and when does the coach step in? How are suggestions made so as not to “deflate” the teacher? Do you see it as possible in a half-our period or do you see several hours as necessary? Who can and should be coaches in your new paradigm? These answers will be very helpful…yours and others!! chime in!!
with love,
Laurie
I knew you must have gone to one of the first three…. so sorry!
Can I try to explain it?
Basically all you are doing is checking for understanding at 3 different levels (slow processors, middle processors and fast processors.
So your structure is carro rojo = red car
So you circle carro rojo…..
After a few reps you go to your barometer and say ¿tommy, what does carro rojo mean…. if he knows great, if not you go to the board and point. You can ONLY ask barometer kids something that is on the board. You can also break it down further and go to 2 barometers, Tommy what does rojo mean? and Billy, what does carro mean?
Circle some more. Go to a middle processor and ask something that is not on the board but a close variation like Bill, how would you say “carro azul”
If he gets it right great if not, say carro azul (try to go to a kid that you think will get it.
Circle some more…. To the superstar you ask for an application – s/he needs to apply the rule for colors to a totally new idea… You ask superstars to translate. you might say Sara, how would you say green elephant? This is differentiation – it will challenge Sara
Lets say we are doing “carlos va a maine. (carlos goes to maine)
Circle that. After a while ask the barometer, slow processor What does Carlos va mean?
Circle some more…. Check in with your middle processor. You might say, what would Carlos habla mean? You might even ask what the “a” on va/habla means.
To the fast processor ask What would He hears be?
Then say Clase, Carlols y Juan VAN a Maine.
Circle that.
After a while go to a barometer and say “what does Van mean? Remember it is on the board. You are just making sure that the barometers know what you are saying. It really is a comprehension check…
Circle some more.. Now go to your middle process. You can ask things like:
What is the difference between va and van?
What does the N mean?
what would hablaN mean (take a verb they know and have them
apply the n…
Circle some more
Check in with your fast processor and ask him/her to apply the rule. You might say How would you say they speak? (you add an N so they would say hablaN
So, barometer – ask what the structure means
middle processor- change it a bit but still have them go from Spanish to English
fast processor: have them apply the “rule” to a new verb/concept
Again, it is quick and seamless…. in and out of circling….. check in with each level of processor….
Help further the comprehension by using the color codes:
I think it supports fully what Ben said in the above post…
Does that help? If not, I would love another chance to explain…
It was so nice meeting you Sabrina… I do hope we get to have you visit us in Maine…
Skip
Skip – to ask someone new to this to be able to key in on the rate of processing – slow, medium or fast and to do that consciously is nuts. It is simply too much to learn for a new person. Rather tell them to fly to the moon. Think about it. All we have ever said on this PLC is that teaching is FLOW, and now Susie is telling us to be aware of the students as members of one of three groups of processors in the class and to teach accordingly, and to observe and analyze and adjust our questioning to about 12 kids in each group who are not sitting together. The entire dance is thus disrupted.The flow is gone. I know why Sabrina says she doesn’t get it now. Because it is so hard to get. To me it is impossible to get. What happened to the dance?
Skip I just read your post again and I think that contrastive grammar is complete bullshit. You know I love Susie and owe my career to her, but good gracious, differentiation of kids in terms of processing speed? I think I could more easily win the Olympic hammerthrow. Tell me what I am missing here.
Because Ben, you can keep students your students, at all levels, engaged with your humor and ability to “hold the stage”. Your spontaneity, or ability to follow the “flow” as you sometimes call it, is mesmerizing. You are a natural mimic, an expert at improv, a total charmer. Not all teachers can do that. Not all teachers want to. They have to appeal to each kind of student in a different way.
As a coach on a track team you would know who can run the hurdles, who can go the distance and who is a sprinter. Susie is offering a way for teachers to do the same in an academic setting. Not everyone can lead the group like a Pied Piper.
This is actually a very practical skill, a way of loving students and honoring students for who they are. Does that make sense?
with love,
Laurie
I think the idea is to get a flow going as you circle…. I did see Susie doing it…
Here is why I am intrigued by contrastive grammar…. (also known as pop up grammar) Most TPRSers have been taught to have kids signal when they don’t understand something -when we are going to fast. Kids are NEVER going to do this.
So, this system of contrastive grammar allow us to proactively go to our slow processors and ensure they understand.
Don’t you think most teachers know within a week or two which students are slow, mid and fast processors?
I would really appreciate some bantering back and forth here because I was thinking of trying this this year. I, like Sabrina, came away last year not getting it at all – Betsy did the contrastive grammar lesson in Japanese and contrastive grammar was completely lost on me.
Skip,
I didn’t understand it b/c it made no sense and in my humble opinion Susie may have ran out of steam and come up with this. Even after you describe it beautifully it doesn’t feel right. I cannot see doing this, there is too much to think about already and I cannot imagine adding another level of difficulty.
That being said, I do want to keep an open mind. If you try it and it works, let s have this conversation again and I am willing to give it a second try.
Thanks you Skip. Looking forward to seeing you and working with you again in October.
I spoke with Von just before my Thursday session. He didn’t talk about contrastive grammar. He said, “Hey Ben just a thought. Don’t go too fast. Make sure everyone understands.” I did and wrote my thoughts about that in the …in a million years… article.
Because it worked. Asking all those questions worked. It was by far the best and clearest session I have ever done at a conference. Had I been thinking of contrastive grammar and how fast different kids learn and all that it would not have worked. We teach slowly enough for all in the room and then we double down on that SLOW and slow down even further. And we toss in some love. And we touch the words. And we taste them. It’s not a system; (hey I just used a semicolon!) – it’s a way of teaching that is a dance, a flow, a wonder. A Mind Meld. A fun time waiting for k’thunk moments from the whole group at once! Maybe that is why I no longer do pop up grammar. They don’t care. They don’t care. They just want to understand and be told how smart they are. And you know what? When I slow down and ask more questions than I ever thought I could in a million years, they become smart! And no contrastive grammar about it. And the entire problem of Education as Hell State is flipped on its ear and becomes Education as Heavenly State and we know that and feel it and that is why this is all so intense. And wonderful. God please bless each one of us as we, with fear, start another year sooner, always sooner, than we want to. Help us to take from what we learn that which we can best use and discard the rest. And give us patience to learn at our own rate. Amen.
this bears repeating…
“Most TPRSers have been taught to have kids signal when they don’t understand something – when we are going too fast. Kids are NEVER going to do this.
So, this system of contrastive grammar allow us to proactively go to our slow processors and ensure they understand.”
Skip, I feel compelled to jump into the fray here to mention a few things. First, I believe strongly in contrastive grammar. The approach gives me one way to structure how I explain new grammar pieces to students. As you say, like all grammar in TPRS classes, it is a pop-up, done over time rather than in one long piece, but it helps me make sure that I have really bridged the new constructions for students. It helps me go slowly where I might otherwise gloss. You have done a magnificent job explaining it here. Your notes are now a permanent part of my TPRS reading collection.
Secondly, my perception is that you very well may have helped turn NTPRS into a new direction. The idea of watching the gurus coach skilled teachers is absolutely stunning. The fact that you were willing to offer yourself up as a model in such unknown territory is a mark of extreme courage, but you had a brilliant idea and you carried it out.
Finally, you didn’t give in or give up under the stress of a very complicated situation. You stayed strong, analyzed the chaos (not of your making) and found a way to tactfully rectify the entire affair. I am amazed by your political and human ability, and I am impressed that you finessed the wave, rode on through, and prevailed.
I totally agree.
with love,
Laurie
Laurie, I know both of us admired Skip enormously. I am replying to this because I want him to see it!
Hey Ben, when you wrote “It’s not a system; (hey I just used a semicolon!)”I could hear that funny voice you use when you are making fun of something… 🙂
So, you ensure 100% comprehension solely by going slow? You never say “what did I just say? or anything like that??
“What Did I just Say” is possibly embarrassing to a kid and has never won my heart over to using it for real. Finger comprehension checks have no value, are bogus, and the discussion is now closed on that one – we use it for administrators to get higher marks on our classroom observations and that is all. Kids even figure out ways to cheat on the quick quizzes, so even they are not entirely accurate. Plus kids who have been tested like pin cushions don’t always test well, even formatively.
I had one kid that was the fastest processor in the class last year, a true superstar, but, because his track record in school was one of failure, he messed up the quizzes. I gave him the A anyway, based on what I saw in class, which was off the chart in quick response time and involved eyes. Guess what? If some administrator tells me I can’t do that, that I have to produce some data to quantify the grade of such a kid, I will make up the data and give the kid what he so richly deserves for being a super communicator with me in class.
Go ahead and fire me. I work for my students and not for anyone else, esp. for kids like that, who have been prodded and embarrassed into failure for years before finding a safe space in my classroom where their true talents can be shown off to all.
Man I have a problem because here we are in extreme change in the way we teach and yet we seem unable or at least reticent to go to extreme change in the way we assess. We better hope Harrell is traveling and can’t read this or he will kick all our assess after working all last year on pointing us in the direction of correct use/interpretation of the Three Modes (new people see the Assessment/Robert Harrell category here).
I love this. All the tried and false ways of assessing in the past, so replete with shaming and embarrassment, are finally given way to a higher way of assessing kids – a genuinely new way that puts the burden of finding out what our students know not on the kids after the instruction but on the teacher during the instruction. I think Annemarie would give me the ok sign on my using the term “badass” to describe this change. So that is correct, skip – I am saying that we must take full responsibility for their success. We bring them success. We do. We no longer fail them. Whoa! (said Fonzie).
Just to repeat what you said: [We] ensure 100% comprehension solely by going slowly That right there is triple badass. Triple badass, Jerry!
Actually, If I think about it, I don’t think I say What Did I just Say” to individuals, I say it to the class and get answers, sometimes more than at other times.
Then, at least, even the slow processors are hearing it. How ’bout that Mr. Ben?
We are talking here about doing something different than has been taught to us.. We have always been taught to “check for understanding”… So I think this is worth some added time…
When we do that, check for understanding by asking “what did I just say?” to the entire class, we have that skewing of responses in favor of the superstars, who then want to move on to the next thing but who invariably leave the other kids, esp. those who have had the joy beaten out of them, in the dust.
Now the thing here is that we are creating this as we go along. It is not about what we have been taught in this work, or are being currenty taught, it is about what works as we fly by the seat of our collective pants and keep moving forward to explore new ideas and dump older ones. It is just the nature of our work.
There is no course of study in this work. Nobody has ever done it before and there are no experts and each of us will take what we want and apply to it to our own individual teaching and thus not fall into the trap idea that there is only one way to do comprehension based instruction.
There is nobody teaching us. Do you really believe that Blaine Ray sits around in Utah coming up with stuff to teach us and then we dutifully go to NTPRS and learn what the new things are? His new thing that he presented with Von was pretty much the same as before. I didn’t even get it and I heard that from a lot of people.
I am not even going to a national conference again, bc I am very aware of how this stuff works now, how it is in constant change and how as soon as we learn one thing it is outmoded and so we need to go on to the next, like this comprehension check discussion which I have turned now into a major rant from one simple question from you – I aplogize for that.
But honestly, I would much rather go to a Robert Harrell workshop given by a proven classroom teacher who is still in the classroom than another national conference with the same old people doing the same old things. I would rather observe real teachers teaching (not the iFLT model which failed in my view bc all the kids were white privileged sixth graders) and maybe get real coaching from real teachers but not in the NTPRS format which, too many people said last week, wasn’t that great.
There are no teachers of TPRS teachers. There is not even TPRS, but rather, a focus on using Krashen’s ideas about comprehensible input to get better at that, not TPRS, which is only one way to do CI. TPRS is old hat, du vieux jeu, as the French say. The very name creates enemies. The new model is what we have here – teachers talking about what they are experiencing in their CI instruction and making changes on a daily basis and slowly getting better via the ongoing dialogue.
You can’t expect the cloud from a nuclear explosion to not expand into newer and newer forms. That is where we are now. I give all credit to Blaine for the idea, but it can’t stay the same anymore than we can keep our shoes from eventually wearing out.
Take the Latinists as an example. David and John came to Las Vegas, sat in sessions, observed, David did some work, got some ideas, will share them, and grow at their own rate relative to what they do in Latin, which is different. Those Latinists will talk to Bob Patrick, networks will form, ideas will be shared within the Latin community, and growth will occur. Those guys didn’t show up expecting to be told what to do. They are clearly super talents and don’t need to be told what to do, esp. since in their field there is nobody else in the world doing this work.
They are the creators, not the receivers, of information, because they go to work every day in the face of harsh opposition from the national Latin community and also locally bc they have the courage of their convictions about what best practices means in teaching Latin and the hell with everyone who opposes them. They are playing for real. Anybody in this PLC who is not playing for real will drop out and just leave us cowboys here. It’s a small private group that is not growing much (four new members after two national conferences) and I love that bc we MUST stay small to be vibrant lest we morph into something really useless like the list.
I hope I am clear. The Blaine Ray/Susie Gross – esp. since Susie has fully and officially retired now from the scene, is now over (NTPRS just didn’t work for me – this is all just my opinion, of course) and we are now facing life without the big boss telling us what to do. We must now work together in groups and help each other. That is what I think. I mean, both Blaine and Susie have been out of the classroom for over a decade – few of the national presenters if you look at it are grunts like us, going in every day, if you think about – Von is out of the classroom, Diana Noonan is, Linda Li is although she could be out of the classroom for 25 years and still be ultra wonderful. But do we really want to be taught by people who are out of the classroom? I don’t.
No. A new era is upon us and no bout adout it. Sorry skip for the ramble. I had some really good coffee this morning. What the hell. It’s all part of the dialogue. I love that this PLC is private. I can say what I want. IF those who haven’t sent in bios would get off their asses and send them in.
“The new model is what we have here – teachers talking about what they are experiencing in their CI instruction and making changes on a daily basis and slowly getting better via the ongoing dialogue. ”
And coaching? At some point could you write about what you see as an effective coaching protocol? I actually saw some effective coaching at the conference but I also saw some problems….(people not like being interrupted, feeling judged, teachers watching getting “yelled” at for sharing their thoughts at the wrong time, and, most importantly, that is not authentic…teaching with TPRS with people who know the L2 is hard, lame, etc..)
What model works best?
1. Should one teacher stand up with the practicing teacher and give input?
2. Should the “class” give input as the teacher teachers or write it down and give it after?
3. Should input ONLY be given if the teacher practicing asks for it?
4. What can be done to lower the affective filter of those practicing.
5. How can we expect to engage in much coaching during the school year when everyone is so busy?
I think you should go to NTPRS next year…. Your sessions rocked the house and your circling with props is a super powerful very practical tool that empowers teachers, helps them personalize their class and deliver TONS of CI.
I totally agree with you that the days of “expert delivers info and teacher goes and does it” are probably numbered. This is not to minimize the work of Susie and others over the years. We all know that they have had their impact.
“I think you should go to NTPRS next year…. Your sessions rocked the house and your circling with props is a super powerful very practical tool that empowers teachers, helps them personalize their class and deliver TONS of CI.”
That is right Skip ! I learned so much from from Ben too and not from those coaching sessions which are too formulaic and devoid of soul. They may be OK for beginners but how can one realistically fit in in a cookie cutter formula? Kids are not molds.
I heard similar complaints from some ladies at Denver airport while we were waiting for our flights and sipping some merry wine. They were humiliated and yelled at by the NTPRS coaches. Can you imagine that in contrast with Ben’s sessions where there was nothing but genuine learning and tons of laughter…..?
I have to say this as I read through all these posts. Ben’s sessions are wonderfully appealing to most bc of the humor and his finesse. But I can’t be Ben. I know this. I am not like that. So, yes I learn a great deal watching him work a crowd. Just like he watched Suzie. But, the reality is that we each have to take this knowledge and make it our own. None of us will be John P., Robert H., Laurie or Ben. All of us must come to grips with what works for us.
As for coaches. Coaching MUST be done with love, and not in a 5 minute session which is what limits the coaching session. It feels awful to be shut down by the coaches bc your structure or language doesn’t fit the model. Thank God for Katarina and Clarisse last year who coached me after hours in a board room for 2 hours one-on-two. It took two hours. And it was fabulously successful for me.
This year I knew the BOX. I went in with something that worked fairly well and when I met a coach forcing me into a box, I just told my group that I couldn’t do that one–they weren’t ready for it as learners.
Coaching is huge but HEART is needed to hold the vulnerable egos who have been doing just fine in their classroom but are willing to be open to some GENTLE suggestions. There are few who are begging to be blasted.
Again…this is because the number of expert-level teachers has so greatly increased…AND because this is the way the world works….the experts who began this entire process have aged out of the real classroom. It will happen to us, sooner than we’d think.
We are in transition. It is a good thing.
As for NTPRS and its organizers. They are not organizing for us. They are organizing for 200+ people at a time…over half of whom have NEVER been to a national conference and over a third of whom have NEVER been trained in CI/TPRS. They are complete newbies. Talk about differentiation!
What was very clear to me is that participants at a CI conference have to be VERY VERY willing to pay attention to their own needs and seek out what will help them. We need to first be aware that even with our experience, every time that we see another teacher teach or present, we can learn.
Second, while the language pieces are crucial and critical in order to help us to “SEE” many things, when we are in the role of a student we do NOT notice what we see as a teacher (how can we think about contrastive grammar while simultaneously trying to learn Japanese?)
Third, everyone needs something, and someone, different. We will each have our own ‘gatekeeper”….someone who, for whatever reason, presents for us in a way which we finally “get” the paradigm.
Lastly, what works for some will NOT work for others. The work that needs to be done is within ourselves.
This is also what I saw in Breckenridge. What we all needed was a group that we met with three times a day. In the morning: What are you looking for today and why? Midday: What is puzzling you ? What isn’t quite clear? How can you look for an answer? Post-presentations/sessions: What did you admire/wish to add to your skill list? What aha moments did you have? What questions were answered? Which were not? Which of the things that you saw/heard/figured out today will change your teaching every day ?
with love,
Laurie
I will never minimize Blaine’s genius nor Susie’s role in giving me my professional life back after I lost it in tears. But I agree that something is happening and it is happening around your points about coaching. You didn’t really need any coaching from me in that formal session with those thirty teachers Wed. nite at NTPRS, bc the Circling with Props thing is in you now, it is part of you, you own it, but I am sure that had I been sitting there off to the right, with the trust we have built over years, and had you worked on, say, moving from PQA into a story, then we could have gotten into some very sophisticated work. Hard work but you have never been shy of being critiqued, one of your truly outstanding qualities. So I choose not to answer those 5 questions bc the TPRS/CI world has been searching without success for the “right” coaching model since Kansas City in 2005 when we first realized the importance of coaching. Your questions, if you look at them (those 5 above) imply that there is some sort of technique that we can find and then apply it to coaching trainees and, if they follow the model we create, all will be well and there won’t be any ruffled feathers and people will vault into the method. However, that is impossible. Not only is it not possible to come up with a formula for coaching, even if we could we could not get it to be done in the proper way by x number of coaches. We are all different and I really appreciate how Laurie addresses this in her comment below. I therefore can only address what works for me as a coach and that is the formula that we did Wednesday nite. It is the only formula that works for me and it is not about doing certain things or saying certain things it is based on pure trust. Look at what Erik did and you and Bernard and then David did in the hallway later. Look at the quality of the interaction between us. We dripped in trust and that is why it worked. I modeled a technique for starting the year or for moving around in the three steps, not too much, just little pieces of those things, and then I sat down over to the side and held up the marker. First Erik “Rock the House Superstar” Olsen got up and worked – those are some lucky kids, right? – then you got up and kicked it’s butt and then Bernard got up and worked for an hour. All I did was throw out suggestions and ideas that came into my mind and then Shannon said some stuff and the Latinists and then it just went on like that. No one way to do it. People observing weren’t even trying to be right, or coach in a way like the other model. If it got out of hand I was there to tell Erik to go hurt the person being rude but see how it never got that way at all? The trust was there! The wine helped. So we need that kind of model, to wit:
1. Training person models for a BRIEF TIME.
2. We get into an hour long side discussion about discipline (nothing wrong with that, it was the deepest discussion I’ve ever had with teachers about discipline by far).
3. Person being coached works. Like WORKS.
4. We continue to drink wine until we fall over because it is the middle of the nite.
5. Someone who didn’t get a chance to work works in the hallway bc we got kicked out of the room.
6. We take the coaching posters and set up in the hallway for another two hours.
7. Everybody falls asleep in the hallway. We leave the hallway a mess. The slot machines wake us up and we all go to bed and get up three hours later, coffee up, and get back to work.
THIS IS ABOUT HARD WORK. IT IS ABOUT NOT BEING IN FEAR ABOUT TEACHING. IT IS ABOUT GETTING TOGETHER AND WORKING HARD. IT IS NOT ABOUT WASTING TIME AT LAS VEGAS SHOWS OR MAKING PEOPLE WONDER WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING BECAUSE THEY ARE SO NEW TO IT. WE NEED TO GUARANTEE THAT STUFF LIKE THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN TO NEW PEOPLE. OUR FOCUS SHOULD BE ON THE WORK ALL DAY AND WELL INTO THE NIGHT.
Enough of this wasting of time at conferences. What does the group want in a conference? We can all decide about coaching and all this stuff. We should ALL DECIDE TOGETHER AND not let a national conference tell us what we are going to get. We should tell the national conference what to give us.
I just won’t go back to NTPRS or iFLT in future years. The cult of personality is just not a good model. I just don’t like to see to so much time and so much money wasted and see lost people walking around wondering what door is hiding the best training. Door #1? Door #2? Right?
Golly I am on a roll of ranting lately. We have this coffee called Dasz Bog in Colorado. I’m blaming it on that. After that really shitty coffee in Las Vegas. Pulleaze!!
Interesting… I did the CELTA qualification for teaching English last year… and it was only good because the 2 teachers we had were great teachers… because we learn by osmosis, by example. But I disagreed with a lot of it. It was output based… forcing output. Not only for our students. But for us. We had from the first day to start teaching lessons in this new system – how crazy is that when few of us had experienced communicative language lessons?
We were given a prescribed formula for the lessons, micromanaged to hell and had to plan it to the nth degree – often 4 hours prep for a 40 min lesson… and we were being judged and graded by our teacher in the corner of the room.
The project to interview a few students and find out about them was near the end of the course… obviously you need that right at the beginning.
It cheesed me off that we were supposed to be instilling confidence in our students, and encouraging them, not correcting them And yet we were being evaluated on our teaching output performance from day 1 of the course. Also they only gave us a couple of language lessons so we could experience this first hand, and only a couple of demo lessons. These were by far the best part of the course – of course – and probably where the real learning occurred.
Anyway 2 things here… beginning TPRS teachers like me need to listen and watch. Receptive skills come first. I’ve got Blaine Ray’s Spanish course DVDs… so I’m using that. I’m sure there’s some mileage in creating videos of teachers being coached in aspects ofTPRS so we can watch those too. I paid for Blaine’s videos. And I would be happy to pay for such DVDs too… could be a great complement to the discussions on this site… also could be a record of the different teaching styles on the forum… vive la difference.
Thank you all for the inspiration and guidance.
You may be a four percenter among four percenters Katherine so, as you see the radical stuff happening here, please point out anything you want. Call bullshit on us. Our position or I should say my own position is very simple on assessment – if the kid doesn’t feel 100% positive about learning French, then I am not assessing correctly.
Errm.. guys I’ll admit I’m not really up there on assessment… it sounds like a nightmare… what you all say seems to make sense to me.
I guess I was just chipping in that I would welcome the DVDs / films of members here coaching other members… and I would be happy to pay to view them. Also that I really like this peer coaching / collaborative learning thing you’re doing Ben because it keeps everyone open and receptive and continually growing and learning something new…
The jury is out on the vids. I became aware over the past two weeks that to capture on film what we do is really impossible – it gives a much fainter shadow than I thought when I first started the big initiative here about sending in videos a year ago. It doesn’t mean we can’t use it, but we need to be aware of its considerable limitations in communicating what this work is.
If you would like to talk more about the coaching, I would love to hear it. As many of you know, I’m a coach. Although the presenting has it’s merits (when you love what you are presenting!!!!!!!!) My heart is in coaching. It is teaching at its best, truly.
Here are some things that I saw implemented (although not often enough ) that could help “soften” the coaching experience.
1. Not pushing anyone to be coached in free coaching sessions (especially the first three days). Let anyone who wants to watch, just be a student in the group, or an observer. This lets people get used to the idea, the process, and to let them figure out which coaches they feel most comfortable with.
2. Asking teachers being coached some of the following questions:
a. Do you want to me to coach you within the time that you are teaching or afterwards?
b. Do you prefer me to stand next to you or behind the students?
c. Would you like me to use cue card messages or point to a sign on the wall rather than speak?
d. Do you want me to watch one specific skill or provide feedback on whatever I might see?
e. Are you more interested in positive feedback or constructive criticism right now?
f. Would you like to just practice a skill without being ‘coached”?
g. Would you like feedback from your “students”?
Ben, you were so right when you said that the most important aspect of coaching was love. What we should try to do as coaches (and coaching is about as easy as teaching…..) is to help the teacher to see and practice ways to connect with the students so that every student understands the language being used and is a valuable member of the class community. Again…it is more about the students than the teacher.
with love,
Laurie
Thanks Ben and Laurie…. VERY helpful…. I do think it hinges on LOVE and TRUST…. I didn’t volunteer to “practice” during coaching sessions…. I watched a LOT…. I just didn’t feel comfortable – I felt all nervous
At Ben’s session at night I wasn’t nervous AT ALL. Just the opposite. I felt SO comfortable. Why? How do we develop that trust?
this is important to me because I really would like to start coaching sessions in Maine.
The other question I have is if you think that watching someone “teach” and be coached is as good as actually being the one who teaches? I often feel like I get more out of watching than actually being the one being coached.
Thanks Laurie for the ideas on the coaching protocols.
Hey Laurie, I was also going to ask what the process was for you to become a coach?
Hi Skip!!
I think that watching someone teach via video and giving feedback, and coaching as it now stands have one big difference: In “coaching”, the teacher gets to go back, right that second, and redo something and then FEEL the difference that change makes immediately.
I know that it was hard for Ben to have me “coach” him at his session on Thursday, but, everytime I asked him to do something, he backed up, repeated, and right away I could see a difference in how students responded to him.
When we get feedback on a video, we are more able to really “observe” and let it sink in, but who knows if we will remember to make the changes the next time we are in front of a class?
Being coached helps us to remember the “muscle memory” so that we can use our skills without straining our brains while we are also trying to get reps, relate to kids, and manage the class.
I think that the immediate positive results from a change are EXTREMELY powerful….and a good coach will help us to experience that.
(BTW, I really believe that you were willing to be coached by Ben because you know each other so well…you trusted him.)
Coaching has evolved, like much of TPRS. I won’t get into the entire history, but I was first introduced to the idea of coaching 10 years ago when the National was first in Vegas.
The coaches training that Rochelle, Teri, and Lizette held on Sunday was very well-received. Carol was there as a participant, as was Kate, and several others I think (my brain is a little drained right now lol ) so hopefully they will chime in as well. (Ben….a new thread on coaching so that this is all in one place?)
The most important thing about coaching is laying the ground rules for the group. The next thing is for the coach to remember that it is the teacher’s effect on the students that matters. If the students are comprehending and responding, life is good and let him/her teach. When there is confusion or boredom, then the coach should look to see what the teacher can change and suggest it.
On a local/regional level, we can, and should be finding ways to coach each other. Hopefully Michele will chime in here. They have a WONDERFUL family of TPRS/CI teachers that meet and coach each other very well.
How did they become “trained”? They didn’t. They watched people who have an approach/style that works for them and emulated it. Then they made a commitment to not only become better teachers, but also better coaches. (and believe me, REALLY becoming a better coach makes you a better teacher!!!)
In all honesty, I can’t recommend that folks attend a coaches training next year because I was not a participant; I was a trainer. You need to hear from someone who invested their own time and $ in order to decide for yourselves.
I can say this: The training came together when participants were assigned a group and traveled from trainer to trainer within that group. There were six stations to travel to. By the time the groups got to the sixth station there was a palpable difference in how the participants responded. The bonding that occurred by allowing them to work together, be vulnerable together, and grow together was obvious.
Becoming a coach at National is no easy business. We have to put ourselves out there all over again. We have to volunteer to be coached on a regular basis in order to remember what it feels like to be coached. We have to keep up with the changes in the approach. The folks who are official coaches and interns miss the majority of the conference. They see little, if any, of the presenters or the afternoon sessions. They often counsel teachers privately at breakfast, lunch and dinner. They HAVE to close up coaching so that they can eat and rest. This was particularly true this year because folks who had been coaching were now presenting and no longer available during much of the day. Because coaches are also human beings, a number of them were also dealing with heavy personal issues and tried very hard not to let that affect their work.
On a regional / local level it is a better world. :o) It is a way to support each other and to grow, as individuals, as teachers and as a professional community.
I’m so grateful for the feedback that people were offended or hurt by some of the coaching. What would really be helpful is if you could share with me (off-blog perhaps so as not to make public any one person’s failings….although no names need to be mentioned) exactly WHAT was done/said that didn’t work.
Was it the choice of words? (No, don’t do it that way) The tone of voice? (cricital, sarcastic, impatient) Criticizing rather than coaching? Did the coach come across as an expert rather than a skilled colleague?
or was it the set up that wasn’t working?
Rotating in and out of groups of strangers? (Did you even know the names of the folks you were teaching?) Not having enough time ? (only 5-7 minutes per participant) So many groups in one room? Switching languages rapidly? (one teacher teaches in Spanish, the next in Dutch, the next in Russian..brain overload)
Feeling like you had only limited time in the schedule of the day to get to open coaching?
This kind of feedback will be very helpful and allow us to improve things for everyone for next year.
Two final questions for those of you who attended as participants:
Kelly/Betsy and Scott/Carol aggressively pursued having a coach in their sessions with them…and worked, when possible, to have the coach be a vital part of the planning and execution of their workshop. Do you notice that and how did it change the presentation?
One suggestion that was made is that each of the groups have a specific coach assigned to travel with you from workshop to workshop in the morning sessions. The ideal situation would be to have the same coach all week so that you could develop a relationship with that coach. Would you have benefited from that?
You can answer any of that off-blog if you would like: lclarcq@rochester.rr.com
with love,
Laurie
Thanks Laurie,
I will start from the bottom of your post and work up
1. I think having coaches part of the session and move with the group from session to session would be really helpful. Some wrote on their evaluations that they needed help with contrastive grammar and there was no one to help them.
2. I did not have a negative experience at all with coaching at NTPRS. I went in and sat as much as I could and just watched (because, quite honestly, I did not have the confidence to try it). At one point Terry told me that there were a few people who wanted to do some “upper level” structures and asked if that would be more helpful. It was and I went. The coaches I witnessed were awesome. There was one intern that I thought was fantastic. Kristin and her mom were great. I did find myself gravitating to just a few coaches… that probably was due more to who I started with…. that who rapport and trust thing
3. My question about watching vs. participating wasn’t in relation to videos but actually watching someone being coached vs. being coached. I actually feel like watching someone teach is more helpful to me than actually teaching. My question here is if it would be possible to develop a criteria for the people watching to give feedback? I know that when I watch someone MANY things come to mind. I teach perfectly from the “drivers seat…”:) Perhaps we could decide if we were going to interrupt as we have input, or jot notes down and share after or even come up with another way. I guess what I am really asking is if you think it is necessary to have trained coaches to engage in the “coaching process” or can we do it as teachers watching teachers?
I think it is very tricky because it is very intimidating to teach in front of other teachers. I think people in Maine might find me intimidating (how might I overcome that problem?)
One more question. Would you recommend that I i get coaches training if I wish to pursue coaching with teachers at might school/state? OR would it be enough to follow your guidelines above.
Thanks Laurie. Once again your insights have been very helpful.
Ooops!! I meant to address #3 but didn’t. Thanks for bringing it back around!!
I LOVE watching other people teach/be coached. You are right. It is so much easier to watch the teaching process when you are not having to be the student!
(and I think that your wanting to comment is a great sign that you are ready to coach!!)
Some coaches do want to/remember to/take time to get comments from the “students”. I try to do it when I know that a “student” has had an “aha” experience. It can be a tricky proposition though.
There is a reason why we have the rule that there is only one (working) coach per group. Too many people giving feedback at the same time comes across as an attack on the poor teacher. It is so easy to see what the teacher “could have done” when you are on the outside. It works best when the coach asks the “students” for positive feedback after the teaching. I have seen groups overwhelm a teacher with great ideas an suggestions for a problem area if the coach allows a group to coach instead of the coach….even if their advice/ideas are spot on.
Does the coach have to be an officially trained coach? No. But a format and ground rules have to be established to keep over-enthusiastic “coaches” in check. Teachers (myself included!!!!) are notorious “fixers.” We want to give teachers the solution. However, the idea of coaching SHOULD BE to watch the students and their reactions. Then notice what the teacher is/isn’t doing and make the connection. Next, suggest ways for the teacher to better engage with the students and let the teacher work with the suggestion. The teacher will know if the suggestion creates a better situation…almost immediately!!
An observer can learn sooooo much from watching. An observer can make a wonderful list of things to try him/herself. An observer can offer support with eye contact and an encouraging smile. An observer can cheer when the teacher works through a challenge!!
Now….if the teacher and the coach seem to be in a pinch, I have seen observers ask, “Could I offer a suggestion?” and then the coach/teacher have the choice to decide if that is the time. Often it is that moment when the observer just “gets it”!!! If I’m coaching I’ll ask for the suggestion. I can defer it )if it isn’t in support of CI), tweak it or celebrate it. I can ask the teacher if s/he wants to try it. Sometimes the teacher would like the observer to demonstrate it. But….the coach needs to keep the group on track and the focus on the “students” comprehension of the language.
Again, I hope that we hear from Michele later on this topic. You don’t have to be a “trained” coach to be a good coach. It’s a bit like leading an expedition. You don’t have to have been the leader and you don’t have to have followed that trail…but you do need the skills, the confidence, the knowledge and the ability to work with others to get the job done. (I think you qualify Skip!!!!!!!!!! ;o) )
with love,
Laurie
PS We’ll keep talking!!
Skip – I have to acknowledge what you say here, because a couple of things really stood out for me.
#1. You said yesterday and alluded to today that you feel self-conscious and do not have a lot of confidence standing up in front of teachers “to be coached”. I saw that too, even when I came to your school to observe you – you even seemed nervous in front of ME!!! Why? you are SOOOO awesome!!! I am so darn new and was in awe of how natural you seemed (but I could “feel” the nervousness and wondered “why?” at the time) The “buzz” around the state is that your school has such an awesome WL department and I have heard that for YEARS – and I have heard people (from ETEP) say what a great teacher you are!!!
#2. People in the state being intimidated by you. I don’t know about that, but speaking from me personally, you are such a KIND, SINCERE person, that shows (at least me) that you genuinely CARE about us – you show us that in all the efforts you put into helping us here in Maine to become good teachers. When I visited you at your school, I was SO excited that you invited me to “try” to teach your class. I was so happy that I would have an opportunity for such a kind and caring teacher to watch me and give me feedback!!!!
Thank you for what you do for us Skip! and I look forward to more feedback from you! 🙂
Thanks MB for your insights and comments…. I am not totally sure where the insecurity comes from… Partly I think it comes by nature… I do think too, though, that there is such a notion that there are certain “superstars” like Linda Li, Ben Slavic, Susie Gross, Laurie Clarq, etc etc that I feel a LOT of pressure because I have been doing this a LONG time. I have this notion that I cannot compare to them… Three years ago when Ben visited he discovered that I didn’t even know how to circle… That was very embarrassing and devastating… Fortunately Ben loved on me so much that I got through it, but it was tough… It motivated me to memorize the “circling template” cold though and, like usual, a lOT of good came out of that pain.:)
So, could you help brainstorm how to get a group of teachers together before the start of the year so that we could practice? I would love to have your administrator there… What do you think?
I have been trying to think of a venue – maybe my classroom? I would have to check that the custodians would be done with it by then. That might be a good central location? I don’t know.
Then…..as far as my admin: I was supposed to meet with him, but I wasn’t “ready” yet. He is on vacation till the 13th – I was going to meet with him then. BUT…Frank just told me yesterday that HE is on vacation that week (just put in for it on MOnday so we can spend time on the boat) So, I will not be able to speak to Admin until the week of the 20th. I can send him an email for when he returns though. Honestly, I think he will be too busy to be out of the building from then till school starting.
Can you send out an email to the Maine Group and see if anyone is interested – like the end of the week of the 20th, since we will all be going back to work the following week – so either Wed or Thurs or Fri of that week? Let’s start there; let’s see where everyone will be coming from and we can figure on a venue between Biddo and Portland? Email me privately.
SO HELPFUL Laurie, THANK YOU!
While I was reading your post I got an “ah ha” that the power might be just having people watch…. The gain would be what each observer learns… if there is a share out at the end fine, otherwise I think it might be enough just to have each person learn from the person teaching…
OR perhaps we could change it up…. do different things at different times….
Thnx again…
Hey Ben, just an encouragement…. I learned so much from you and Bryce at iFLT. It was so much better with kids (even if they were rich white girls) than other teachers.
Usually when I watch TPRS presenters, in my head there is a sarcastic voice saying things like. “That would not work in my school” or “you couldn’t do that with my 9th graders”. But watching you deal with the Zoe/Chloe situation, and watching you include Mateo, that voice disappeared.
Watching Bryce with the upper level kids, his pace, his love, his humor, etc. It totally inspired me with my Spanish 3 and 4s next year.
I agree I would rather watch you work with a class of 30 low income students, but there was so many intangibles I picked up from you guys you can’t get from a room full of teachers or a video.
david
Ditto what David said! (David are the kind man and his wife who gave Sabrina and I a ride back to Beaver Run on the last day?)
yes.
well then, THANK YOU! 🙂
Thank you David it makes me hesitate to even edit some of the video I have. I even have video of those classes. But maybe my big idea of using video to make concrete changes in what we do is not going to work. We’ll think of something. And you are right. Bryce is a master of upper levels. And it is so low key. I have seen him teach complex compound tenses and it just seemed so simple to the kids. He’s got the upper levels going on, no bout adoubt it.
I must chime in here and disagree. Maybe this is just for me, but I think watching videos of others doing TPRS is very helpful…….for me, at least. It was once said, by Ben I think, that the best way to learn TPRS is through osmosis……watching an experienced teacher do it. I agree. I learn so much by watching others at workshops and conference sessions. The problem is it is so damn expensive to go to conferences and workshops all the time, I just can’t afford to go to anymore even though I feel like I could benefit greatly by continuing to go. There’s going to be a workshop put on by the Ohio FL Association next week but I just can’t afford the $150 plus hotel and meal expenses to go. I’ve once heard a foreign language teacher say that TPRS is just a big money making machine. While I don’t agree with that (there are many generous TPRSers out there), I can definitely understand why people would think that. It seems like to become somewhat proficient in TPRS you gotta be willing to put out about $1,000+ to go to workshop after workshop and add in hotel and meal costs as well. And then if you want to go to nationals, you’re even more in the hole. Sometimes it feels like to me that you have to be high up on the salary scale to be able to really get a feel for this teaching method. It’s a lot cheaper to stick with the textbook. I hope to someday occasionally hold free workshops here in northeast Ohio to give teachers a chance to experience and learn about TPRS without breaking the bank. Actually, on Monday I will be meeting with a new teacher that I went to college with to teach her about TPRS; she got hired into a very pro-TPRS district and she knows nothing about it. Hopefully after Monday, she’ll feel somewhat prepared to give it a shot and I’m going to try to get her to join this PLC as well.
Videos can be a way to offset this cost. Videos can be a way for beginners to watch advanced TPRSers in action and it can be a way for beginner and intermediate users of TPRS to get coaching. And videos are so much cheaper than workshops. There are flaws to videos, sometimes we can’t see or sense things on video that we otherwise could in real-life, but it’s still better than nothing. It’s better than not being able to see anything at all because we don’t want to, or can’t, fork over $300 for a workshop…..just to have to fork over some more a year later to go to another workshop.
That’s my $0.02 at least. I see a lot of benefits in videos.
Wow! What a great thread! Although I’m sad to read that Ben has decided to never attend NTPRS again. The break out coaching session was amazing. It was the only coaching session that I attended due to the fear factor that I might actually have to teach in front of other teachers and become even more vulnerable. Thank you Skip for putting yourself out there for us! I would love to see a conference with more of what Wednesday night gave us. I took so much away from that session. Maybe there could be a format where experienced teachers are coached on the skills that they want to practice while others watch and contribute to the discussion.
I know that I could have benefitted from attending some of the coaching sessions but I was just too afraid of being put on the spot like I was forced to in some of the skill sessions. I knew that I wasn’t going to be put on the spot on Wednesday night and so of course I came.
Even if I wasn’t completely satisfied with all of the sessions this year, I did enjoy the community. I desperately need the community. It’s not easy being somewhat geographically alone in this journey.
…I would love to see a conference with more of what Wednesday night gave us….
Weren’t it wonderful? An actual safe place of a break out session as you describe, Andrea. What’s to keep us from doing that again? I just won’t do it at NTPRS again for my own reasons. I’m not trying to be rude – the conference just wasn’t very good when you consider the expense. I don’t have to say exactly why I don’t want to go back but put it under the category of too much hot air, not enough vetting of presenters, and presenters with vastly different ideas representing one person, which caused confusion in people’s minds. I’m not going into it. People shouldn’t spent that much time and that much money for that much vague training no matter how much love was there. End of discussion. Time to look to the coming year and get ready. We have a ton to talk about in terms of starting the year, given the threads from last year, which all pointed to extensive change for many of us, including those of us who have been working with comprehension based instruction for many years.
This kind of support can only occur when people already know each other. This is what (I think) has happened in Alaska. A group of people jumped in to help each other become better teachers and have continued to grow closer as friends and as professionals. Trust develops over time. Let us know how your sessions go in Colorado.
with love,
Laurie
…this kind of support can only occur when people already know each other….
I disagree.
Ok. Can you elaborate? I rarely see total strangers bonding in groups of 6-12 for hours at a time in the way you described your Wed. night session. You met with people with whom you have built a loving community of trust over months of sharing. That rocks an entirely different vibe than squeezing into a 30 minute session before lunch/another workshop. We may all have started as strangers on this blog, but that doesn’t not last long. We have a shared personal and professional experience here that is dependent upon trust. Michele’s folks in Alaska have developed the same thing over the course of several years. It is the ideal group to coach. If you have ideas on how to create that kind of rapport on a national level in the course of three days, we need to hear it. We need more of it. If it can’t happen, then how do we reach out to and include people who are not in this particular PLC so that they, too, can have a positive and powerful coaching experience? What conditions are necessary and how can we create those?
with love,
Laurie
Laurie I’m just saying that most of the people in that Wed. nite model didn’t know each other or had for just a few days. And yet they got up and worked. It took Bernard, whom I had never even met, a few minutes to get his nerve up to work but he did so for an hour and with grace and humor. Laurie all of this gets kind of over-analyzed, I think. There is no secret model here that we can apply to a national level and I have no answers. My intuition is telling me that both models I experienced this summer at iFLT and NTPRS had too many experts walking around for the training to reach the people who had shelled out a lot of time and money not to mention courage to attend for a week. I just feel the future is about people working in smaller groups. I am not calling for a boycott of anything. I am just being honest and don’t wish to offend. There is so much pressure on presenters to be good, to produce, and the people who need coaching instead spend most of their time watching, watching, inststead of working, working. There is so much planning and talking and it seems that the Dufour model, the model of teachers just hanging out together, is being lost in striving for some kind of plan that works. I think a good place to start is by relinquishing the idea of the experts showering knowledge on us and then we analyze it and suddenly we can do it. That is not how we learn languages and that is not how we learn to teach languages. We learn by going in every day and suffering through a lot of shitty classes while praying and counting on the good will of the kids and our colleagues to get to a point of lift off with the approach. And that that is all we need to get better. We get better because we get an idea, try it out in our classrooms, fall on our faces, get up and try again. A lot of people with experience in comprehension based instruction have patiently waited for things to happen for them at the national trainings for years and that has not happened to my knowledge – maybe with the four percenters. I feel that many teachers over many years have not continued to come to national conferences because they have left feeling incapable. I mean to stop that and that is a lot of the reason I have this PLC. Notice who is in this group – the grunts, the mad dogs, those who will quit if they can’t do it another way. If they had continued at national conferences because they felt that they were learning significant things there each year then the size of NTPRS each year would have grown to thousands of teachers, but each years 75% of the teachers are new and curious and if you do the math like I said before most of them don’t return bc they get chewed up when they go back into their classrooms bc this stuff is just plain difficult and there is no other way to say it. I mainly taught myself in my classroom after those first five years of Susie Gross workshops, which are the only ones I really can say I learned from back then from 2000 to 2005. Some of those sessions this year were way over the heads of most people who haven’t been doing comprehension based teaching for very long. So why make them sit there through those lectures when they could be getting coached? But it is no secret that there were flaws in the coaching, not the coaches, but the model, this year. I saw too many just sitting in the hallways waiting for lunch. I most certainly don’t have any answers – I’m just thinking this stuff through myself, talking privately a lot with a few people I trust mainly Sabrina and Bryce. you are the last person in the world I would ever want to offend but bc I know this space is safe I say these things. Not to offend. To speak freely which is why this PLC was set up like this in the first place bc I don’t think we will ever grow unless we tell the truth about the hell states we have been in as teachers. This is the first year since my first national conference in 2005 where I feel things really getting shaken up, by the way. One would expect that with such a seismic even occurring as Susie leaving but I don’t think it’s that so much as that the model is just old, that’s all. It’s a worn out model. Again, I owe Blaine and Von so much, and I am very happy that they won’t read my honest reflections here either. iFLT wasn’t all that wonderful either. People didn’t get trained – they only got to watch and wonder. So to say it again I just don’t agree that people have to know each other to work together and feel the Burn of the New Learn. Honestly, my thoughts are not clear, except to say that my gut tells me that if a national conference keeps losing such a high percentage of people each year and that most of the people attending are new (I was told 75% were new each year and that has been a pattern for a decade), then something isn’t working and we could try to figure it out for another ten years and get nowhere or maybe it is best to just abandon the overall model, which is my own choice. I say abandon it in favor of other initiatives. Hugs to you and of course this is an intellectual discussion – I’m not feeling any emotion in it, anyway. You are the best and if we had 25 Laurie Clarcqs runnign the show, this discussion wouldn’t even be happening.
Ben,
I agree with what you say. I have, however, benefited from the “experts”, yourself included. You came as an expert and shared really helpful stuff with the teachers in Maine twice. Susie, Blaine, Jason have all helped me and the teachers of Maine. My classroom management is based on 80+ percent on Susie’s teaching. The rapport I have with classes is due to you. Jason helped me understand how to do reading with classes. I think the roles are different though. The experts help us once or twice a year. We, in small regional groups MUST help each other more regularly.
Can’t the two go hand in hand?
When thinking specifically about national conferences, I really think pairing “experts” with “coaching” should be considered. I think that unless people “try” the technique being “taught” it just goes over their heads. Case in point, both Sabrina and I really didn’t get contrastive grammar the first time Susie “taught” it. (my first time was last year) It is necessary to see somebody being coached who is using the skill OR to actually try it yourself while being coached (though I TRULY believe it is more helpful to watch someone practicing.)
Would you keep thinking this through? I know that you say you learn by writing and we learn via the process as well. Will you keep writing and thinking about it? I would also feel better if you would at least leave the door open partially about attending national conferences. I know that you added a lot to the conference for everyone that attended your workshops and the evening sessions. That moment I had with Erik gave me great insight into how kids might feel in my class. The discussion about how mush to fish for answers was awesome. The session was worth so much to me.
So keep writing and thinking and hashing….okay? And leave that door open a little.
Skip
Kathunk! I finally got it. Sorry it took me so long.
I felt the same at IFLT…the classes were very cool to watch, the afternoon sessions had good information, but the participants ended up spending the entire time watching someone. Coaching was there…in an extra room…and for a number of reasons..it didn’t ‘fit”. I know of only a few people who really took advantage of it. It was nearly a one to one training…which is kind of cool, but not the intention.
It’s just impossible for me to chime in on NTPRS 2012 as a participant because I wasn’t there in that capacity. What I do know is that there will be changes for next year. Who will make them and what they will be, I have no idea. I don’t anticipate being involved on that level. Like everyone else, I can send my thoughts to the folks who collect the feedback and hope for the best.
Teaching via CI is a physical-emotional-psychological-social experience. It needs to be felt with the body, heart, mind and soul…not just watched. Watching helps…but it isn’t enough to create the sense of confidence and success that a “new” CI teacher needs.
The number one thing missing for CI teachers is confidence. Interestingly, it is the number one thing that language students lack.
Each of us as teachers is as different as our students are. We will all need some observation (input). What Chris has said about the videos has great merit. Some of us are willing to jump into the fray of CI teaching without a gazillion hours of observation first…just like some of our students are willing to speak in complete sentences from the get go.
Just like those students, however, we’ll fossilize in our teaching if we don’t continue to get input…and let it really sink in. We will need a variety of input…and some of it will come from physically standing up to ‘FEEL’ this method.
This method is different because it is COMPLETELY INTERACTIVE. It requires a class and a verbal, emotional and physical exchange of energy.
Is there any one right way to do it? No.
Is there a best way to do it. Never. We each should be finding a better way every day. Can you ever be your best as a partner, a parent, a friend? It’s the same thing. Every day is a new day, a new opportunity to create an exchange of energy, information and love that is better than you’ve experienced before.
I love the idea of smaller, encouraging groups. It is what is needed and always has been needed in teaching. I also hate the thought of losing a national platform (or two). If we are ever going to really break into the mainstream, we have to be visible on a national scale.
In fact, we have to be even more visible, even bigger. This is the only way that people will be able to teach in the way that they know is most effective for students.
We will miss Susie’s input and presence in many ways. She has left a void which must be filled. Not necessarily by one person, but it must be filled. We need people who are willing to make this approach comprehensible to everyone who is willing to listen. We need a person, or people with a similar vision, to look at the Big Picture. To ask the Big Question…How do we get this in the hands and hearts of more teachers?
I think that, in truth, the answer is that we are those people. We must support and encourage each other. We must reach out and share what we know. We must not be discouraged by the people around us who do not get it. Nearly every single person in this “movement” who has left ( or is leaving) a tangible footprint in the world of CI based pedagogy has faced (or is facing) resistance in his/her own district.
I know you know the scripture…Faith, Hope and Love…and the greatest of these…is Love.
It applies.
with love,
Laurie
Right on Laurie, but for me it is not about keeping the national platform. To me, bigger is not and has not stepped up to the real need. For me, smaller is the new bigger.
“less is more”?
and each should go where s/he is called.
with love,
Laurie
That less is more is actually one of Ted Sizer’s Ten Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. It’s a good one and is certainly not being applied at the national workshops. Good, well I think I made my position on that clear this evening. Dang!
And one more thing. This is a private space where group members share ideas in safety. People send in bios, we read them, we get a feel for the person’s intent (which determines everything in our professional working relationships) and we grow deeper into the work. This discussion we had tonite could tempt some of us to share with others what we are saying. I don’t feel comfortable with that. It is why I want the group to stay small. Pls. respect that about this PLC. Keep things here so we can continue to share ideas honestly. I don’t want this group to turn into another listserve.
How were the sessions by Teri Wiechart and Gary Di Bianca (my Ohio buddies)?
Teri is going to be the Ohio Foreign Language Association’s president next year, I asked her to please use that bully pulpit of president to advocate for CI instruction.
Chris, that is WONDERFUL news about Teri!!! I met her in Breckenridge – what a Sweetheart! 🙂
I don’t know Gary but I can tell you that Teri is a consummate professional with extreme kindness, tact and a seriously sharp mind and you can’t do any better than her in all phases of training. If you had ten Teris at NTPRS there would be no discussion of the coaching, either, just like what I said about Laurie above.